


As Long As You Like

by Catchclaw



Series: Mental Mimosa [153]
Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Caretaking, M/M, Post-Captain America: The First Avenger, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Roommates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-27
Updated: 2018-09-27
Packaged: 2019-07-18 05:42:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16112030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catchclaw/pseuds/Catchclaw
Summary: Steve Rogers, Man Out of Time, is living in Tony Stark’s guest room. Guest suite. Guest wing. Whatever.





	As Long As You Like

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Sharing clothes; a character letting someone stay in their home; sharing confidences. Prompt from this [generator](http://bleep0bleep.tumblr.com/promptsnsfw).

Steve Rogers, Man Out of Time, is living in Tony Stark’s guest room. Guest suite. Guest wing. Whatever. Long and the short, Tony’s sharing his home with his father’s unfrozen idol and frankly, it’s fucking weird.

Steve hates alone time; that’s one thing. And kind of understandable, really. The man’s been dead for 70 years. He’s also prone to touching everything, to having his hand on something--the wall, the back of an armchair, the edge of the kitchen counter--at all times. He seems to need that kind of tactile stimulus to remind him, what? that this is all real, that he’s not stuck in some death dream inside his own head and under a mountain of ice.

And he likes coffee. Likes to drink it, to smell it, to gaze into its mysteries at the bottom of an endless cup, rain or shine, dead of night. He’ll sit in Tony’s kitchen and stare for hours at the stuff, those big, bone-breaking fingers wrapped gently around a Stark logo mug.

Tony sits with him, because of course Tony does.

Steve is steeped in trauma. It’s seeping out of his pores. But for all of his attempts to get with the twenty-first century, sharing his pain in public is not part of his skill set, nor would Tony push for it to be. Even if he strongly suspects it would help.

From what Howard once told him, Steve was quiet even back in the day, when men were men and everybody had broad shoulders and embraced the American way. Quiet when it came to personal stuff; he’d never talked in Howard’s earshot about losing Bucky, so maybe the reticence shouldn’t be all that surprising. Still, Tony figures there must be a reason that Steve makes a point of seeking him out, of avoiding isolation but not taking the express elevator to the street, either, and losing himself in the big bright streets of New York.

One afternoon, though, he comes up from the workshop and Steve’s drinking a beer. A Pabst Blue Ribbon, in fact. And doesn’t so much as raise his head when Tony walks in.

“Hey,” Tony says.

“Mmmm,” Steve says.

Tony grabs some ugly green juice from the fridge and debates with himself for a second. He stinks of motor oil and sweat and for the last hour, under the hood of the old Aston, he’s been dreaming of a hot shower, but this, Captain America slumped over a shitty beer and refusing all eye contact, suddenly seems much more important.

So Tony doesn’t say _do you want to talk about it;_ he just tugs out a chair and sits down. Lets Steve know the most important thing without opening his mouth: that he’s there.

He drinks his green juice and he watches the shores of Steve’s face, the ones that even the messy strands of his hair--knocked from their usual Brill cream perfection--can’t really begin to hide.

There are tears on Steve’s cheeks, jagged ones, stuttering unevenly over his chin and down the bowline of his mouth. The can is crushed between his fingers, a slow steady crunch, and he smells distinctly like this is not beer number one. He’s making this soft, heart-rendering sound, a sob that he isn’t trying to swallow, and he’s shaking, a tremor in his arms that peaks at the back of his neck.

God.

Tony gets down maybe two sips before he can’t stand it anymore, before he has to put down his glass and reach out.

“Hey,” he says again, gently this time. “Steve?”

He touches Steve’s arm, the inside of his elbow, and Steve’s head snaps up like he’s been shot, mouth open and eyes red, and for a second, Tony thinks Steve might punch him, might toss him across the room like a toy, but instead, Steve says: “Please.”

“What?”

Steve lets go of the dead can and catches hold of Tony’s oil-stained hand, squeezes hard, holds. “Please,” he says again, the word soaked in tears. “Tony, would you--I need--”

And then Steve’s standing up, pulling Tony with him, and folding them onto the floor, a sprawled and untidy heap of what feels like grief, and then Steve Rogers, Man Out of Time, is curled up in Tony’s lap, his fingers clawing at Tony’s filthy tank top, rasping something like: “Just for a minute, I promise, I just need this for a minute. Please.”

He’s heavy and the angle is awkward, Tony’s back pressed against some unforgiving cabinetry, and Tony’s heart is beating so hard that it feels like the arc reactor is throwing sparks in its attempts to keep up. But his arms go around Steve without question, without any kind of conscious command, and he finds his face tucked into Steve’s hair, the sweet smelling Ivory of it all, finds his mouth moving in small ghostly kisses. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, it’s ok, Steve. As long as you like.”

They sit like that for a long time, long enough for Steve to start crying hard and then ease back from it, over it, and stop. He doesn’t say anything when the tears fall, or after, but every time his breath hitches, he makes that sound again, the soft one that has something in Tony’s gut aching like a bad bruise.

“Can I ask you something?” Tony says once the storm seems to have faded.

“Ok.”

“Did something happen?”

“Today, you mean?”

“Yeah.”

“On this date, yes. But not today.”

“Oh.”

Steve’s fingers find Tony’s arm, tracing little patterns there, tiny pictures of the past. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“You don’t have to. I’m just glad you’re ok. You kinda scared me.”

Steve leans back a little, tips his chin up to look Tony in the eye. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

A tiny smile. “You’re sitting on the kitchen floor holding your houseguest against your will. I’d say you’re owed an apology.”

“It’s not against my will!” Tony says, a little sharper than he means to. “I mean technically, yes, you’re sitting on me and I can’t feel my toes but if I wanted to get up, trust me, buster, I’d be up.”

“Ok. Good.” Steve’s the color of strawberries suddenly, his expression blooming towards shy. “And, um. Tony? Thanks.”

“Sure. Any time. Though you may want to pick a point where I’m not so fucking filthy.”

That gets him a legitimate smile, one with spread lips and a hint of those Chiclet teeth. “It’s ok. I kinda like it. It makes you smell like you, all that grease and oil stuff.”

Tony wants to clap back, has one ready, but before his mouth can push it out, Steve’s kissing his cheek, a brief, butterfly brush. “Really,” Steve says. “Thank you.”

There’s a text on Tony’s phone when he climbs out of the shower, his skin singing with clean and with heat.

_It’s Bucky’s birthday_ , Steve’s written. _Couldn’t say it out loud before, but I thought you should know_.

Now texting the guy likes, especially the weird clicky typewriter sound that his phone makes every time he punches a key. Still, he’s never sent anything personal before, so it takes Tony a moment of staring to figure out how to respond, what he should say. The best he can come up with is:

**Thanks. And i’m sorry.**

_I was trying to remember his last one, or the last one before the war._  
_And I can’t for the life of me remember where we went or what we did. That’s what upset me.  
So much is gone already. Why can’t I just have what's in my own head?_

**You want to talk about it?**

_Not right now. Maybe someday._

**Anytime** , Tony writes, and he means it. **Whenever. You know I’ll be here.**


End file.
